Last November 19th took place in Brussels STICK’s final presentation, where main results and recommendations were shared to potential stakeholders interested in implementing them, especially the European Commission, federations and sport clubs and European universities.
During the final event in Brussels, STICK Consortium defended their proposal of Academic and Sporting Mobility Scheme in front of a representation of European Commission members and potential stakeholders with the aim of introducing their scheme within the new Erasmus+ programme (2021-2027), which is being designed by in the moment the European Commission.
The aim of the 2-year pilot project, coordinated by Atlètic Terrassa Hockey Club, and co-coordinated by Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona with a consortium consisting of four more European universities and four more European Hockey clubs (Beeston HC, and Nottingham Trent University from UK, Pembroke WHC and Dublin City University from Ireland, KHC Dragons and Universiteit Antwerpen from Belgium and Erasmus University Rotterdam and HC Rotterdam from the Netherlands), was to facilitate high dedication athletes to go one step forward on their dual career as students and athletes, combining the Erasmus exchange mobility with sport competition, which has often been very complicated, so far. When adapting the current Erasmus mobility programme, one of the project’s challenges was to reconcile the demands and needs of universities as well as those of the student-athletes and their respective clubs’ and federations’.
Even though the project took field hockey as a pilot sport, the results will be implementable to any sport.
The designed academic/sporting exchange mobility scheme is being tested during this current academic year 2019/20, throughout a pilot programme with the first mobilities among universities and clubs of the consortium.
The event was chaired by Dr. Màrius Martínez, Vice-rector for International Relations of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, followed by a scientific approach to Dual Careers by Dr. Miquel Torregrossa from the same university. Mireia Galí, STICK Project Coordinator from Atlètic Terrassa Hockey Club and Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, introduced the project along with the pursued aims and activities that have been carried out. Audrey Byrne, from Dublin City University, Dominique Vos from KHC Dragons and Chris Campbell from Dual Career Experts at Nottingham Trent University were in charge of explaining the results from the university international offices’, the clubs’ and the university dual career services’ perspectives, respectively. To conclude, David Passmore, Dual Career Expert at Dublin City University and Coach of the field hockey U-21 ladies Irish national team and at Pembroke WHC, closed the presentation with main and final conclusions and recommendations for the correct implementation of the project results.
From now on, any sport or university willing to implement STICK’s academic-sporting mobility scheme can use the guide supplied at the webpage of the project, www.stickproject.eu.
However, in order to create a reliable impact in athletes’ Dual Careers in Europe, it is expected from the European Commission to consider the project recommendations implementation.